China's hackers are targeting civilian infrastructure, vastly outnumber FBI personnel, Wray says

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday warned Congress about the massive scale of China's hacking program and said that it is targeting critical civilian infrastructure in the United States.

China "has a bigger hacking program than that of every major nation combined," Wray testified before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

"If you took every single one of the FBI's cyber agents and intelligence analysts and focused them exclusively on the China threat, China's hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to one."

At another point in the hearing, Wray said China is targeting critical civilian infrastructure, including energy, communications, transportation and water sectors. 

"Just this morning we announced an operation where we and our partners identified hundreds of routers that had been taken over by the PRC state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon," he also said.

The FBI later said on X that the Volt Typhoon malware was pre-positioned to harm U.S. civilians in the event of a conflict. 

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